Question

Two balls of silly putty are thrown at each other. when they hit they stick together and coincidentally fall motionless. ball a has a mass of 0.30 kg and was initially moving at -10 m/s left and ball b was initially moving at 5 m/s right. what was the mass of ball b?

Answer 1

The mass of ball B is found using the law of conservation of momentum. With ball A having a mass of 0.30 kg and a velocity of -10 m/s, and the system coming to rest after the collision, ball B's mass is calculated to be 0.6 kg.

Step-by-step explanation:

To find the mass of ball B, we will apply the law of conservation of momentum which states that the total momentum before a collision is equal to the total momentum after the collision, provided no external forces act on the system. In this case, the balls stick together and stop moving after collision, which means their combined momentum becomes zero. Therefore, the momentum of ball A before the collision must have been equal and opposite to the momentum of ball B.

We calculate the momentum of ball A using the equation momentum = mass × velocity, which gives us the following:
momentum of A = 0.30 kg × (-10 m/s) = -3 kg·m/s.
Since the system's total momentum after the collision is 0, the momentum of ball B must be 3 kg·m/s (positive value to cancel out the negative momentum of ball A).

Therefore, the momentum of ball B is:
momentum of B = mass of B × velocity of B
3 kg·m/s = mass of B × 5 m/s
resulting in mass of B = 3 kg·m/s / 5 m/s = 0.6 kg.

So, the mass of ball B is 0.6 kg.